Monday, November 7, 2011

Xander's Arrival Story Part 4

That first night after Xander was born was tough. Xander spent most of it in the nursery because none of us had had any sleep in what seemed like ages and I needed to recover. As exhausted as I was, I didn’t sleep well at all. A c-section is major abdominal surgery and I was seriously uncomfortable as a result, the nurse had to wake me up frequently to check how things were going, my blood sugar was trending low, and I was still throwing up like nobody’s business.

At one point, determined to get at least a little sleep, I asked the nurse to please put me on a dextrose drip. This nurse (who was not my favorite in general!) actually seemed hesitant, and then said that it would mean taking me off of the pitocin for a while. It was suddenly clear to me why I was still throwing up. I told her to switch it anyway and we could just switch back once my blood sugar was up, because being constantly in the 50s and 60s very simply isn’t healthy. She made the switch, my throwing up slowed down, and my numbers started to rise. (I also wasn’t in a rush to get back on the pit, because it was really just supplemental to what my body would do naturally to return the uterus back to normal.)

After that, everything was manageable again. I had lows, especially since I didn't feel up to eating full meals right away, but I could hold food and drinks down once I was off the pit the next morning. Other than having to ask for a lot of juice and soda, diabetes kind of dropped into the background again for the rest of our hospital stay.

Of which I am glad, because we had other things to focus on.

Xander was healthy, and seemed just so perfect! At 8 pounds 10 ounces, he was on the bigger side of normal (but was actually smaller than I was when I was born). The other common risk when a mother has diabetes is that the baby’s blood sugar can drop right after birth. Xander’s was described as “borderline” on the first test, but they simply fed him and all of the following tests were normal.

Chad, Xander, and I were Tired with a capital T. There were times when it took me 10 minutes to test my blood sugar because I would fall asleep 4 times before I finished. Seriously, I’m not exaggerating! Really! Chad has a little story about one time when I was going to put my glasses on, but I paused with the glasses suspended a few inches away from my face… and just dosed off in that position for a minute. When I came to, I just finished putting them on like nothing had happened.

But like I said, all three of us were tired. Chad was trying to feed Xander a bottle on Xander's second night and was just nodding off repeatedly. The nurse told him that if we’re going to give him bottles, “We can do that. Don’t try to be a hero. Let us keep him in the nursery, and you get some sleep.” I imagine this must have been a relief to him since I really couldn’t do much that day after Xander was born. Having a C-section makes even walking to the bathroom and back hard work, much less changing diapers and bouncing babies. Chad was suddenly thrown into the task of taking care of both of us. We let Xander go for the night and finally got some decent sleep.

To sum up the timeline: We went into the hospital Friday evening, Xander was born Saturday (August 13th) evening, and we left the hospital Tuesday afternoon. The entire experience was exhausting, but the results were so worth it.
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Going home... Please focus on how cute Xander is and not on how
aweful I look when swollen and without makeup!